Excuses, excuses, excuses. How often do you make excuses.
When you lose a lot of weight in a relatively fast time, people will always ask you how you have done it, some are genuinely interested, however some just want you to hand them a magic formula, so their own weight will disappear without any effort or research.
An observation that I see all the time is the ridiculous excuses people give me, as a reason to not work out or change their diet. I had to overcome my own excuses before starting my journey, but the first step is to realise that the are just excuses, not truths.
When I explain Keto to people, the first statement is ‘no bread’. Which 80% of the time is followed by this retort “Oh, I could not live without bread”. Let’s just look at that statement, do the people making this statement think they would drop dead if they didn’t have bread in their diet, or maybe they think that their lives would be so miserable that they would commit suicide? That is effectively what they are saying in that statement.
Why are we so hooked up on bread, well its everywhere, we are constantly reminded about it. Give us our daily bread, using your loaf. Bread gets everywhere; however a shocking fact is, you can live perfectly well without bread, you won’t die without bread, in fact you probably will live longer without bread. I am planning to write a blog on the evils of white bread, so look out for that!
I was once trying to explain the absolute joy of bacon to a person who was interested in my story, Bacon is a keto superfood, nearly no carbs, tasty and contains a mineral called Selenium. Selenium does remarkable things to your body, but one effect of Selenium is it actually makes you happy, it affects your mental health in a positive way. Happy people move more, which in turn makes you lose more weight.
I was instantly shot down, with an interesting reply. “Oh, I won’t eat bacon because of the nitrates”. Well, to say I was shocked was an understatement, the person in front of me was chronically obese, probably with a BMI of over 50, he had limited mobility due to his weight. His fear of bacon has probably arisen from an article he read in a newspaper, or maybe an internet post, how nitrites may be linked to cancer, however the article probably did not mention, that most dietary nitrates are plant based. Celery, beets, spinach and even potatoes are high in nitrates.
What point am I trying to make here, we love excuses, we love to take an obscure fact and use it as a tool to not do something, we store that tool in our head until we need to use it against someone trying to help or advise us.
Excuses not to exercise, I was recently chatting to a young male colleague about my exercise routines, I told him that skipping was my main form of exercise and that it was one of the best exercises you can do to lose weight. Now bear in mind, this colleague was about 23-25 years old, young and fit without any health issues, and worked in a relatively active job. His reply to me was “I can’t skip”. So again, let’s put that int some context, when I purchased my Crossrope, I took it to show my mother, now my mum is a sweet old lady, she is 79 with a myriad of health complaints, angina, asthma, arthritis, and many more age-related illnesses.
What did she do? She picked up my rope and swung it over her head and jumped the rope. Granted she stumbled a little on landing and I had to support her, but what had she just done? She had just kicked the ass of a 24 yr. old; she did not let an excuse stop her, she just did it.
Now she may have only done one jump, but that’s one more than my colleague did. He stopped himself trying because of an excuse. We are all experts at finding excuses, it’s so easy to find a way not to do something, I can guarantee you could list 100 reasons not to exercise now if you tried.
I try with my blog posts to have a point, a reason. If you’re reading my blog, then you are interested in losing weight. Therefore, my point is, “What are YOUR excuses”. I don’t need answers on a postcard. But you need to know when you are making excuses. You will think you are making excuses to the world, but you are only making excuses to yourself. You can run, you can jog, you can skip, and you certainly can live without bread!!!
Stop making excuses if you want to lose weight.